Yesterday morning, I found myself rushing around in a snowstorm, trying to get my daughter to her Spanish lesson. We needed to stop at the grocery store on the way. I hurried around the store, grabbing what we needed—and some of what we didn’t—then back into the snow with my teenage daughter in tow. My hands full, glasses covered in snowflakes, and trying not to cough my head off (a lingering flue symptom), I knew it meant that the Lord about to put someone in need in my path. It is how He works.
A homeless gentleman stepped right in front of me, asking for money. He caught me off guard, so I was a bit more firm than I normally would be. My daughter knows that I don’t like to be directly approached when my hands are full and she is with me. I still have military tendencies even though my Navy days are 20 years behind me. I looked him in the eyes and told him that I would happily go back into the store to buy him a meal, but that I would not give him money. He again asked for money to get back to his tent, but I said I was only going to buy him food.
My daughter and I put our groceries into my RAV4 and made our way back into the grocery store. As we passed him again, he asked if I could also get him a drink. “Sure.” A woman passing by scoffed at him and me. She couldn’t believe that this gentleman would be so bold as to request something specific of me and that I happily obliged. I have helped the poor enough over the years to find nothing surprising about this encounter.
I grabbed a couple of turkey sandwiches, bags of chips, a Gatorade, and a water, paid for them and walked back out of the store. I handed him the food and told him, “God bless,” and he said the same. He was off in an instant to ask others for money, and I needed to get my daughter to the Spanish lesson we were late for. Afterwards, I thought about the scoffing woman.
Why do we help people? Is it because we expect profuse gratitude in return? This is often not what happens when we help the poor. Anyone who has served the poor for a long time knows that many of these people are incredibly lost, wounded, and have forgotten—or never knew–their inherent dignity. There is mental illness, abuse, drug addiction, sexual immorality, and a whole host of other issues. The stories I have been told over the years would startle and confirm the scoffers in their indignation.
Regardless, the Lord commands that we serve those in need. He tells us that at the end of our lives we will be judged on charity alone. St. Vincent de Paul said, “Do not turn your face away from any poor man, and the face of God will not be turned away from you.” In Matthew 25:35-36—a favorite of St. Teresa of Calcutta—the Lord says, “’For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’” The Lord does not say that the person in need must have it all together. He doesn’t say they need to be polite or grateful. He simply says that we are called to fulfill the just needs of those people He places in our path.
It is not my place to be overly concerned with the delivery and requests of the homeless man in front of me. If he needs a drink, then I know the Lord wants me to get him a drink. This interaction is not about me. In many ways, those who scoff and mock the poor because they dare to ask for help, have missed the Lord’s point. This man has inherent dignity. He may not fully understand that, but He is made in the image and likeness of God. My role is for a split moment in time to treat him with the dignity he deserves. I am called to provide for his needs because he is loved by God.
I could very easily have told him no and made my way to our Spanish lesson. I was in a hurry, but then I would have missed the Lord’s lesson. No matter how busy we are, we should never be too busy to treat someone in need in a manner that is fitting of a Christian. The encounter was transactional in nature, but it had spiritual meaning. It ended up being a needed encounter not only for the gentleman who needed a couple of meals, but for this woman who refused to see his inherent dignity and reduced him to an irritant upon the body politic. She needed to see me buy this man lunch.
Do we Christians look different from our neighbor or do we dehumanize the poor? The Lord asks us to look different from those who would ignore the fringes of society. In fact, it is the sick and the lost that He came to save. It is only by the grace of God that the roles are not reversed in these encounters. My husband’s company laid off 36 people this week, something that is happening across the nation in many sectors. We are blessed that he did not lose his job, but there are countless others going through the nightmare of losing their family’s financial livelihood. Poverty has become a reality for many families across the nation.
It is important for us to remember that our call to help the suffering poor has very little to do with us. It has to do with the needs of the other person. They are not required to be grateful for our help. They are not required to fulfill the rules of decorum in order to get our help. They do not need to have their act together in order to be given aid. The Lord goes out to reach these people in order to bring them back. If we only view them as leeches upon society—a mentality extremely widespread, even in Christian circles—how can the Lord possibly bring them to Himself through us?
We must cast off sentimental illusions about helping the poor and begin to see with the eyes of Christ. The poor are worthy of our help because they are loved by God. St. Vincent de Paul said:
You are the servant of the poor, always smiling and good-humored. They are your masters, terribly sensitive and exacting masters you will see. And the uglier and the dirtier they will be, the more unjust and insulting, the more love you must give them.
With that in mind, the gentleman’s request for a beverage was quite appropriate. He was telling me what he wanted, and I was obliged to get it.
How do we view and treat the homeless in our midst? Are we the scoffers or the ones providing a meal and a drink? Are we fulfilling the Lord’s commands to serve the poor or have we embraced worldly views of the homeless? The next time the Lord places someone in need in front of us, may we see with the eyes of Christ, and happily drop everything for a brief moment, so He can use us to minister to someone in need.
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
